Sacred Musings: October 2024
Art Basel Paris and L'heure bleue
Bonjour à tous et à toutes,
Happy Halloween, Día de los Muertos, Samhain, Scorpio season — whichever marker of the spooky time of year you choose to celebrate.
Some of you may be thinking that this is a holiday I go big for every year — but I must confess, as someone who lives in a rather gothic headspace and identifies as such, I’m in a Halloween mood year-round. However, it is nice to see the rest of you meet me where I am usually at, before heading off towards the next holiday. (You may be surprised to learn that I anticipate mulled wine and spiced cake with the same enthusiasm many others reserve for their Halloween costumes).
Here in Paris, the light is beginning to fade earlier each day and appear later each morning. Paris has received countless tributes to her beauty, but I would like to throw mine into the mix and sing praises to the color and quality of her light.
Much in the way that it’s impossible to take a photo of the moon, so it is the same when it comes to accurately capturing the rich golds and deep blues of Paris, particularly at night. I have always been enamored with ‘l’heure bleue’, the ‘blue hour’ which immediately follows sundown. I have only truly seen it in Paris; certainly not in Los Angeles, where sunsets are an explosion of technicolor pinks and reds, or Berlin, where the sky is a stern oyster gray, or New York, which becomes bathed in orange and yellow.
In the the short time following the sun’s descent below the horizon, the Parisian sky turns the most brilliant, decadent shade of twilight blue. It is inky and technicolor; cold, yet womblike. It is impossible to capture, and yet, I find myself trying anyway, on evenings where the sky is clear and the weather is good.
Of course, the major event of this Parisian October was the arrival of Art Basel, this year in the newly reopened Grand Palais. Generally speaking, I consider myself lucky to avoid the churn of the global fair schedule, as I have nothing to sell (aside from subscriptions to Sacred Monster), nor do I have anything to buy. However, I am always happy to be invited to see art, and the chaos of the week was full of it.
I found myself largely disappointed in the offerings on show at the main fair. It seems as though a softened art market had many of the exhibitors showing works they hadn’t been able to sell at Frieze the week prior, and were desperate to offload to make a flattering Q4 — and I’m particularly looking at you, Blue Chip LA Galleries, because I know well what you have and by whom that could have been in your booths!
That said, I was absolutely charmed by the showings at NADA (New Art Dealer’s Alliance) across town, particularly the clever ceramics by LA artist Meegan Barnes with Lefebvre et Fils. Anyone who can find a way to honor Pink Taco — once the worst establishment to open its unholy doors to the Sunset Strip, now mercifully shuttered — and Manet’s disinterested barmaid from the Folies-Bergère is a hero in my book. I was also taken with an embroidered depiction of an orgiastic gathering of Pans with the Tom of Finland Foundation. NADA was more punk, spunk, and funk than Art Basel — no wonder I preferred it.
On a final note, if you have not yet watched the video of my talk at PRS in September — don’t miss it! I will return in 2025 for the next installment of the Orphic Trilogy. Keep your eyes peeled.
à très bientôt,
Chloë Helen America Cassens